Steven Soderbergh has been consistently churning out movies year after year some great, some good, some indifferent, some meh. To be fair to the director he hasn’t exactly bestowed a big almighty pile of steaming excrement on an audience in his career. Is that all about to change with Haywire? Thankfully no.
If you go to the IMDB the synopsis for Haywire goes as follows “A black ops super soldier seeks payback after she is betrayed and set up during a mission.”
And essentially thats the story, I think. Because if truth be told Haywire is a bit disjointed. It’s by no means all over the place, but its structure which follows a serious of “anecdotes” as told by our super solider played by Gina Carano, as she escapes one of the bad guys in a hijacked car doesn't run as smooth as you might think. It’s almost too clever for its own good, and using Soderbergh’s recognisable style (which, again to be fair to the man, is quite clever) it doesn’t gel together entirely well. You will, at times be left wondering the who, the what, the where and “what now?”. That said though, the movie does hold together to some capacity.
There is quite a heavy weight cast here with everybody from Michael Douglas to Michael Fassbender combined with Ewan McGregor and Antonio Banderas for good measure. Although ladies, be warned. Antonio’s beard that he sports for much of the movie, isn’t the kind of thing you’d be cuddling into. Peter Griffin, on the other hand would be proud of the beard. And I’m pretty sure there was a few nesting birds living in Puss ‘N Boots beard. Anyway, that aside, Michael Douglas just does Michael Douglas. Safe as houses. McGregor also is convincing enough. Fassbender on the other hand has a bit more intensity to him and by all accounts came off quite battered and bruised as his grappling with Gina Carano was quite full on. But all have limited screen time and are not utilised to their fullest. Which is to be expected I guess, with so many heavy hitters.
And speaking of the leading lady, she is super bad ass. It’s only a pity we didn’t get some more bad ass shenanigans. The fight scenes in Haywire (Sadly, there are only a handful) are incredibly realistic, all helped by the fact that the audio track isn’t your stereotypical Hollywood fight one. Punches and kicks sound like they do in real life, and not like something out of Double Dragon. The violence here is incredibly realistic which does give the movie a bit of a unique tone.
Carano does have a great intensity about her and is quite the opposite to what we have been conditioned to in female heroines. She is no Angelina Jolie. She’s gritty, bad ass and can certainly kick some ass. Besides the physical side of her role (which you’d expect wouldn’t be a problem with her being a MMA fighter and all that) she has a great presence on screen and is entirely convincing.
With it’s overly complicated structure and at times, confusing story, Haywire feels alot longer than its listed 93 minute running time. That said, you won’t find yourself looking at your watch as Soderbergh does keep things moving at a fairly solid pace. The locations are superbly shot, in particular, the scenes in Dublin (and I’m not biased I swear) are great. Never before has the Irish capital looked so great on screen as Carano traverses its rooftops and kicks some Gardai butt!
Shortcomings aside you could watch alot worse, as the good outweighs the bad here. Overall Haywire won’t melt your mind nor will it have you rushing back to the cinema for a repeat viewing, but you won’t exactly hate yourself for seeing it either. Worth a punt.
